In the timepiece capital of the world, time may be running out for carbon-heavy imported steel thanks to a new solar-powered furnace.
Swiss firm Panatere has patented, and has now inaugurated, the world’s first two solar foundries for melting down steel for reuse.
Consisting of 500 concave mirrors mounted on a heliostat that allows them to track the Sun, each is focused into furnace’s chamber until it reaches 2,000 degrees Celsius. Heat like this can melt steel in 1.5 hours, all without any fossil fuels being burned.
They are marvelous micro and macro engineers, but the Swiss import most of the steel they use, including 15,800 metric tons for the watchmaking industry alone.
“There is a real interest in recycling our valuable resources. We want to keep the metal waste from the factories and recycle it locally,” Panatere CEO Raphaël Broye told the Keystone-SDA news agency.
By 2028, the recycling center should be producing 1,000 tons of solar steel per year, added Broye.
Located in the French-speaking canton of Neuchatel, Panatere’s first solar steel bar will be exhibited at the International Watch Museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds, where the foundries operate.
Quote of the Day: “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” – Edgar Allan Poe
Photo by: Jovan Vasiljević
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
80 years ago toady, the microwave oven was patented by Percy Spencer. The self-taught engineer from Howland, Maine, employed by Raytheon at the time, noticed that microwaves from an active radar set he was working on started to melt a Mr. Goodbar candy bar he had in his pocket. The first food deliberately cooked with Spencer’s microwave oven was popcorn, and the second was an egg, which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters. READ more… (1945)
Found in ancient Bearded Vulture nest- an Agobía sandal made of grass and twigs c. 674 – Credit: Lucía Agudo Pérez, CC By 4.0
Found in ancient Bearded Vulture nest- an Agobía sandal made of grass and twigs c. 674 – Credit: Lucía Agudo Pérez, CC By 4.0
Researchers in Spain were left feeling a mixture of confusion and intrigue when they found several straw sandals embedded in a bearded vulture nest.
They didn’t know it at the time, but it was over 6 centuries ago that a bearded vulture flew from its hunting grounds into a sheltered cave nesting site and dropped off a sandal called an Agobía.
There it lay, fulfilling who-can-say what purpose, until ecologist Antoni Margalida pulled it and many other human artifacts, some as old, others younger, from the abandoned nest.
Vultures, like raptors of all kinds, tend to reuse nests generation after generation. A study was published on the discovery and was picked up by National Geographic, which went on to explain that one golden eagle nest was documented to be 20 feet in depth from parents adding material to it, while in Greenland, analysis of bird droppings below a gyrfalcon nest proved it to be 2,000 years old.
With that context, suddenly the Agobía doesn’t seem so far-fetched, but many other objects such as tools, sandals, a piece of a basket, a dyed scrap of sheep’s leather, and the carved horn of a mountain goat.
Included in the mix was a crossbow bolt, which may have been taken in lieu of a branch, or because it was embedded in an animal the vulture brought back to its nest.
“This material is very well-preserved during centuries,” Margalida, from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Spain, told Nat Geo.
The cave ecosystem prevented them from erosion by the elements, and the nests, which Margalida and his team reached by rappelling down into the cave, took on the character of a natural history museum. Studying bearded vulture nests can help ecologists glean insights into why the birds had disappeared from the area.
To that end various eggshells and feathers found in the nests could contain traces of toxic compounds like lead known to be harmful to vultures and scavenging birds, but they had to separate them out from nearly 2,100 pieces of bone, including 86 hooves.
“We have several ideas to analyze in the future,” Margalida says. “I think that this material will offer a lot of possibilities.”
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Scientists from MIT have created a conductive “nanonetwork” inside a unique concrete mixture that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy.
It’s perhaps the most ubiquitous man-made material on Earth by weight, but every square foot of it could, with the addition of some extra materials, power the world that it has grown to cover.
Known as e c-cubed (ec3) the electron-conductive carbon concrete is made by adding an ultra-fine paracrystalline form of carbon known as carbon black, with electrolytes and carbon nanoscales.
Not a new technology, MIT reported in 2023 that 45 cubic meters of ec3, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement, could power the whole home, but advancements in materials sciences and manufacturing processes has improved the efficiency by orders of magnitude.
“A key to the sustainability of concrete is the development of ‘multifunctional concrete,’ which integrates functionalities like this energy storage, self-healing, and carbon sequestration,” said Admir Masic, lead author of the new study and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT.
“Concrete is already the world’s most-used construction material, so why not take advantage of that scale to create other benefits?”
The improved energy density was made possible by a deeper understanding of how the nanocarbon black network inside ec3 functions and interacts with electrolytes. Using focused ion beams for the sequential removal of thin layers of the ec3 material, followed by high-resolution imaging of each slice with a scanning electron microscope.
The team across the EC³ Hub and MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub was able to reconstruct the conductive nanonetwork at the highest resolution yet. This approach allowed the team to discover that the network is essentially a fractal-like “web” that surrounds ec3 pores, which is what allows the electrolyte to infiltrate and for current to flow through the system.
“Understanding how these materials ‘assemble’ themselves at the nanoscale is key to achieving these new functionalities,” adds Masic.
Equipped with their new understanding of the nanonetwork, the team experimented with different electrolytes and their concentrations to see how they impacted energy storage density. As Damian Stefaniuk, first author and EC³ Hub research scientist, highlights, “we found that there is a wide range of electrolytes that could be viable candidates for ec3. This even includes seawater, which could make this a good material for use in coastal and marine applications, perhaps as support structures for offshore wind farms.”
At the same time, the team streamlined the way they added electrolytes to the mix. Rather than curing ec3 electrodes and then soaking them in electrolyte, they added the electrolyte directly into the mixing water. Since electrolyte penetration was no longer a limitation, the team could cast thicker electrodes that stored more energy.
The team achieved the greatest performance when they switched to organic electrolytes, especially those that combined quaternary ammonium salts — found in everyday products like disinfectants — with acetonitrile, a clear, conductive liquid often used in industry. A cubic meter of this version of ec3—about the size of a refrigerator—can store over 2 kilowatt-hours of energy. That’s about enough to power an actual refrigerator for a day.
While batteries maintain a higher energy density, ec3 can in principle be incorporated directly into a wide range of architectural elements—from slabs and walls to domes and vaults—and last as long as the structure itself.
“The Ancient Romans made great advances in concrete construction. Massive structures like the Pantheon stand to this day without reinforcement. If we keep up their spirit of combining material science with architectural vision, we could be at the brink of a new architectural revolution with multifunctional concretes like ec3,” proposes Masic.
Taking inspiration from Roman architecture, the team built a miniature ec3 arch to show how structural form and energy storage can work together. Operating at 9 volts, the arch supported its own weight and additional load while powering an LED light.
The latest developments in ec³ technology bring it a step closer to real-world scalability. It’s already been used to heat sidewalk slabs in Sapporo, Japan, due to its thermally conductive properties, representing a potential alternative to salting.
“What excites us most is that we’ve taken a material as ancient as concrete and shown that it can do something entirely new,” says James Weaver, a co-author on the paper who is an associate professor of design technology and materials science and engineering at Cornell University, as well as a former EC³ Hub researcher. “By combining modern nanoscience with an ancient building block of civilization, we’re opening a door to infrastructure that doesn’t just support our lives, it powers them.”
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The Anguilla Airport parking, which is being expanded via the money made from selling the .ai domains - credit, Timo Breidenstein via Wikimedia
The Anguilla Airport parking, which is being expanded via the money made from selling the .ai domains – credit, Timo Breidenstein via Wikimedia
Back when the internet was just starting, nations were all given a URL in order to publish websites official to the nation. The US got .us and the UK got .uk.
Well Anguilla, the small British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, was given .ai, and with investments and startups surging in the field of artificial intelligence, the country has suddenly found itself with something like a new natural resource—as if it found an oil deposit.
Forever the country has depended on tourism and fishing, but now it sells off the domain rights for .ai for literally millions—$35 million last year to be precise.
Selling .ai now accounts for over 20% of the national revenue, according to World at Large. Charging $140 for a two-year registration makes for steady income, as 90% of the domains have been renewed.
To keep track and control of the domain address purchases, Anguilla has signed a five-year deal with US tech firm, Identity Digital, that controls internet domain registrars. Having around 600,000 registered domains, it’s estimated that its revenues by 2027 will exceed $54 million.
That money has financed an expansion in the island’s central airport with a new terminal and runway for $175 million, which gets totally overwhelmed by planes during the new year when planes from neighboring St. Maarten come to Anguilla to land due to a lack of space on the runways there.
It’s not the first example of a country suddenly benefitting from their domain tag. Montenegro’s .me has become very successful among personal startups, while Tuvalu’s .tv tag has made big money through the streaming industry.
Neither Anguilla, nor Tuvalu, nor Montenegro probably even had internet access when those domains were given to them. Oh the irony.
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Aerial view of the stadium in the garden of The Royal Dyche pub in Burnley - credit William Lailey SWNS
Aerial view of the stadium in the garden of The Royal Dyche pub in Burnley – credit William Lailey SWNS
Pub owner Justine Lorriman loves soccer, and has spent the last year transforming the garden area of her establishment into a mini stadium, with its very own terraced seating, mini football pitch, and outside bar area with seats given to her by the local team.
Her pub is called The Royal Dyche, after the most successful manager of Burnley FC in recent times. Burnley are at the center of the community.
Justine has called the garden ‘Little Longside’ in reference to one of the stands at the club’s stadium—Turf Moor, and spent $38,000 on the project.
“The idea came after I bought the badge, which used to hang in front of the home dugout,” said Lorriman. “The Director of Fan Experience Russell Ball asked if I wanted it after they managed to get hold of it when they were resurfacing the pitch.”
“They sold it to raise money for a young season ticket holder called Lucy who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma cancer—it was to help pay for her treatment.”
The lifelong Burnley fan started building the area, which is a five-minute walk from the club’s home ground, in the summer of 2024. She paused the work in the winter before restarting this summer and adding the final touches for the start of the new season.
The seats are originals from Turf Moor’s Cricket Field Stand, which were removed last year to make way for the new safe standing area. It also has an outdoor bar which serves a selection of draught beer and a football net for those wanting to kick the ball around a bit.
– credit William Lailey SWNS
The wooden fencing found on either side of the garden has graffiti artwork which reads ‘We Are The Longside’ and ‘No, Nay, Never’—both lines from songs sung during matches by the fans, was carried out by a local artist Jamie Buckley.
“The football club is at the heart of Burnley it unites people, sparks friendships, and builds communities,” said 39-year-old pubgoer Simon Townley.
“The Royal Dyche carries that spirit beyond matchdays, giving us a place to come together not just for a drink, but to keep the football family alive throughout the week.”
WATCH a short tour…
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Quote of the Day: “God sleeps in the minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals, and thinks in man.” – Arthur Young
Photo by: NEOM
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Happy 70th Birthday to the brilliant cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was born in France. The Chinese-American musician was a child prodigy, performing from the age of five, when his mother, a singer, and father, a violinist, moved to New York City. READ more about this prodigious but also innovative musician… (1955)
A daughter who became the first in her family to graduate from college has handed over the master bedroom of her new apartment to her mom—who in 64 years never had a room of her own.
The duo grew up in poverty and uncertainty, homelessness and insecurity, but through it all, Anette Duarte never stopped being the rock for her daughter Ana.
Experiencing homelessness and shelter stays multiple times growing up, Ana recalled to People Magazine that while the chaos of her surroundings filled her with anxiety, Anette would always find some way to prevent the worst from happening.
This carried on until Ana received a scholarship to Florida Atlantic University, and graduated with a degree in social work before joining one of the largest Christian charities in the country.
Helping the poor—work she saw so often growing up—is now what she does for a living, a living that has afforded her the opportunity to pay rent in an apartment, buy groceries, and even decorate a bedroom for her 64-year-old mother.
“Most of the time we stayed in cramped rooms in rundown places because that was all we could afford,” Ana told People. “It never felt like home, just a place to survive until the next move.”
“My mom has never had her own room in her entire life — not even as a child. I wanted to give her something that symbolized peace, dignity, and a fresh beginning.”
Ana recorded the decoration and the reveal of her mother’s new bedroom on her TikTok account.
WATCH the reveal below…
@anaelizabethduarte Vulnerable caption: my mom and I have never had a place to call our own. Ever since I was born, we have been in and out of homelessness, and I truly never thought one day we could have a place of our own. But nothing is impossible with God. Moving in, I decided to decorate my mom’s room and give her the master because it dawned on me that she has never had a room of her own I think ever in her life. Life wasn’t easy, but here’s to new beginnings. Starting with a fresh room. Friendly reminder that this is our parents’ first time living too and that there’s no mountain in your life that God can’t conquer🥹❤️ @TJ Maxx @HomeGoods @target #hopecore#faith#girlhood#roomdecor#newapartment♬ original sound - Golf Rabble
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Little brown bats hibernating - courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Little brown bats hibernating – courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
In a positive development for a maligned animal, cave-roosting bat populations in Wisconsin are recovering from a fungal epidemic.
Wildlife authorities are reporting that for the third year in a row, the state’s bat populations seem to be rising.
Numbers of little brown bats, big brown bats, tricolored bats, and northern long-eared bats are estimated via citizen scientist-led surveys, and each year the base estimates collected through sightings are going up.
Introduced to these shores by what were likely cave explorers from Europe, the humidity-loving fungus Psuedogymnoascus destuctans was having deadly effects on cave bats east of the Rockies.
Bats are important pollinators for many native species, and their hunting of flying insects can only be a good thing as tropical mosquito-born diseases are becoming something of a normalcy in the US.
The four species mentioned above roost and hibernate in caves during the winter. Building up vital reserves of fat, they then enter into a torpor wing fold to wing fold with one another to keep warm in the roughly 50°F of a cave. It’s this proximity that biologists believe is the reason why tree-roosting bats do not seem to suffer from WNS.
Biologists told the Badger Herald that the fungus takes its toll by waking the bats from hibernation. The sudden jolt of metabolic energy needed to leave the state of hibernation not only depletes fat reserves during the winter, but sends them into a state of confusion during which they take wing and leave the cave only to freeze to death.
A story from Wisconsin Today in 2024 reports, however, that in the state’s two largest roosting sites, the number of bats had gone up in 2023 and in 2024.
Jennifer Redell, a conservation biologist studying Wisconsin’s bats, said in the report that “bats in Wisconsin that are surviving with White Nose Syndrome are doing things to reduce the amount of fungus on their body.”
Two months ago, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources conducted the annual bat survey, and sightings topped 25,000 individuals, a growth of more than a thousand since the previous year’s count.
Despite often being pictured in swarms, bats are actually slow to reproduce, and colonies of these social, winged mammals can take decades to replenish after depopulation events like WNS.
They’re also often maligned as vectors of rabies and other diseases, but as the great American bat conservationist Merlin Tuttle said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, “the average number of human fatalities from bats is near 1 per year in the US, and far more people get rabies from dogs in this country—where our spouses kill us off by the thousands.”
These creatures are vital to not just the health of their natural ecosystems, but our artificial ones as well.
An unnerving study published in Science and found by the Badger Herald demonstrated that counties that had bat die-offs had an increase in insecticide use by farmers. This increased insecticide use was then linked to an 8% increase in infant mortality.
Think of that the next time you become concerned about bats in your attic.
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Jackson Drum (bottom center) with his teammates after his rehab - credit, family photo
Jackson Drum (bottom center) with his teammates after his rehab – credit, family photo
From the ice hockey rinks of Minnesota comes the story of a young man determined not to let an injury change his life the way his doctors assured him it would.
Whether the desire to get back on the ice or faith in his creator, Jackson Drum defied the odds of a C1-2 spinal cord injury suffered whilst playing, and is regaining capacities typically lost forever under these circumstances.
“He wasn’t supposed to have any movement or be able to breathe or drink or anything,” said his mother, Erica, who added that the chances of him doing what he went on to do were “one-in-a-trillion.”
“When we told him he was paralyzed in Canada, he was like, ‘I am not going to be paralyzed,'” Erica told CBS News.
GNN isn’t saying that all miraculous recoveries are possible through that statement of belief, but all miraculous recoveries tend to start with a statement of belief of some kind.
So it was after Drum got injured during a prep school hockey game north of the border. The Minnesota Wild fan then embarked on a 9-month rehabilitation program that saw him ditch the ventilator he was on.
“He wasn’t supposed to get off the ventilator, then he got off the ventilator. Then he wasn’t supposed to be off a feeding tube and then he got off a feeding tube,” Erica said. “It’s so unexpected that it’s just like a miracle.”
He got some movement back into his legs, and his rehab has even included striking hockey pucks.
After 9 months he returned to watch his team play, met up with his coach, and shared the locker room with his teammates, all of whom had by then heard what had happened and were delighted to see him.
On Sunday, the Minnesota Wild gave Jackson a great experience, inviting him to the game and giving him a suite to share with friends and family. During the break between the 1st and 2nd periods, they announced his return home on the Jumbotron.
Jackson hopes to one day play hockey again, but at the moment his goals also include showing people that spinal cord injuries are not the end of the period.
WATCH Jackson conquer his rehab in a report from CBS below…
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Quote of the Day: “Turning to face my fear, I meet the warrior who lives within.” – Jennifer Welwood
Photo by: Tim Mossholder
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
114 years ago today, Beatrix de Rijk became the first female licensed Dutch aircraft pilot. This pioneering aviator was born in Surabaya, modern-day Indonesia in the Dutch East Indies, to a Javan mother and a Dutch father. In the Netherlands, she was the first Dutch woman to drive a German automobile, but she found the car was too slow for her, so she bought an NSU motorbike instead, forfeited her inheritance, and left for Paris. READ how she got her wings… (1911)
The human world is full of headlines about people who can’t get along—and sometimes peace and harmony seem impossible.
Thankfully, a cute animal story from Australia can remind us there’s another way.
A few weeks ago, Steve Lamplough found two creatures from opposite corners of the animal kingdom bonding in his backyard.
While at home in Victoria, Steve heard his dogs barking and a commotion outside. When he went to investigate, he found an epic surprise on the back of his Golden Retriever, Denni.
A baby koala was hanging on for a cross-creature piggyback.
“It was quite amazing to see,” he said, in a story by People. “Especially when [Denni] was running and the baby koala was bobbing up and down like a jockey.”
Steve also posted pictures onFacebook, where commenters speculated that the baby koala likely fell from a tree and Denni simply tapped into her maternal instincts to help the joey through the ordeal.
He posted three pictures of the unexpected animal encounter. In one of them, Denni the Retriever seems to be smiling fully, perhaps even proud, as the joey hangs on like someone might cling to the back of a motorcycle driver.
Courtesy of Steve Lamplough
Unfortunately, the animal adventure couldn’t last forever. The joey needed to be returned to its mother, so he carefully removed it from his dog and placed it in a nearby tree where its mom could find it later.
The plan worked perfectly. The koala momma eventually returned for her offspring, without any issues.
In fact, the only lasting effect seems to be found on the internet, where Steve’s Facebook post was warming hearts and spreading joy across social media.
“Well this is officially the cutest thing I’ve seen on the internet,” a commenter named Pat Rogers wrote.
“You just broke the internet!!” Jane Ellem wrote with four heart-filled emojis as punctuation.
Co-founders of the UCL Huntington’s Disease Centre - Professors Tabrizi and Wild
Co-founders of the UCL Huntington’s Disease Centre – Professors Tabrizi and Wild
There is no cure for Huntington’s disease, a devastating brain disorder that causes severe motor loss, dementia, and eventual death.
But, a clinical trial delivered positive results this week, finding that patients receiving a new treatment for 36 months experienced 75% less progression of the disease overall (compared to patients who did not receive the treatment).
This is the first time a drug trial achieved a significant slowing of Huntington’s progression, according to uniQurea, a gene therapy company based in the Netherlands and US.
The new gene therapy, AMT-130, was performed on 29 patients including 12 who were given a high dose. Those given a high dosage of AMT-130 experienced 75% less disease progression, as measured by a standard rating scale that incorporates motor, cognitive, and functional measures.
There was also a statistically significant benefit as measured by other scales of disease progression, including motor and cognitive function.
The researchers also measured participants’ levels of neurofilament light protein (NfL), a protein that is released into the spinal fluid when neurons are injured—a useful marker for neuronal damage. The scientists found that NfL levels in the spinal fluid were lower in people treated with the drug than they had been at the start of the trial, even though NfL levels would be expected to increase by 20-30% over three years. They say this suggests the course of the disease has been slowed.
The trial, conducted by scientists at University College London (UCL) with funding from uniQure, also found that “AMT-130 is generally well-tolerated by study participants and has a manageable safety profile”.
“l am thrilled,” said Professor Sarah Tabrizi of UCL’s Huntington’s Disease Research Centre and lead scientific advisor on the trial. “For patients, AMT-130 has the potential to preserve daily function, keep them in work longer, and meaningfully slow disease progression.”
It is expected that a single dose of AMT-130 would last for a person’s whole life.
UniQure plans to submit an application to the US Food and Drug Administration early next year requesting accelerated approval to market the drug, with applications in the UK and Europe to follow.
“This result changes everything,” said Professor Ed Wild, principal investigator of the UCL Huntington’s Disease Centre trial site at UCL.
“My patients in the trial are stable over time in a way I’m not used to seeing in Huntington’s disease – and one of them is my only medically-retired Huntington’s disease patient who has been able to go back to work.”
“Behind each datapoint is an incredible patient who volunteered to undergo major neurosurgery to be treated,” added Prof. Wild.
About the treatment
Huntington’s disease is caused by a single genetic mutation, a discovery made in 1993. People with an affected parent have a 50% chance of inheriting the mutation, meaning they will develop disease symptoms—but until now, there were no effective treatments to prevent or slow the progression of the disease.
About 12,000 people in the U.S. are currently living with Huntington’s disease, and about 8,000 in the UK.
The new gene therapy permanently introduces new functional DNA into a person’s cells. It consists of particles of a harmless, empty virus, plus a set of instructions encoded in custom-made DNA. The virus is injected directly into a part of the brain called the striatum which is particularly vulnerable in Huntington’s disease. This is done using a highly complex neurosurgical technique called stereotactic surgery, in which tiny tubes called catheters are guided to the right part of the brain. Once in the brain, the virus particles enter the neurons and release the DNA cargo.
The AMT-130 DNA becomes a permanent addition to the neuron. It contains a set of instructions for making a molecule of RNA which has been designed to bind to the RNA which is produced when a cell is making the huntingtin protein. When AMT-130 RNA binds to the cell’s own huntingtin RNA, it summons an enzyme to destroy it. As a result, the huntingtin message is deleted and less of the protein is made – permanently.
The neurosurgeries for the UK arm of the trial were conducted at the University Hospital Wales at Cardiff University, and funded by Health and Care Research Wales. The trial results will be presented formally in the US at the HD Clinical Research Congress next month in Nashville, Tennessee.
(Watch a video about the therapy from Reuters below…)
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Fish fossil Acronichthys maccagnoi was located well inland from the sea shore – Credit: Don Brinkman / Royal Tyrrell Museum
Fish fossil Acronichthys maccagnoi was located well inland from the sea shore – Credit: Don Brinkman / Royal Tyrrell Museum
The fossil of a tiny fish found in southwestern Alberta, Canada, provides new insight into the origin and evolution of otophysans, the supergroup of fish that includes catfish, carp and tetras—which account for two-thirds of all freshwater species today.
The specimen, located well inland from any seashore, was studied by researchers at Western University and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology and was found to be a new kind of fish entirely.
The skeleton measures around 1.6 inches long (4 cm) and lived during the Late Cretaceous period, along with the iconic T. Rex—about 100 million to 66 million years ago.
Named Acronichthys maccognoi, the discovery was detailed in a study published this week in the journal, Science.
“The reason Acronichthys is so exciting is that it fills a gap in our record of the otophysans supergroup,” explained study author Professor Neil Banerjee. “It is the oldest North America member of the group and provides incredible data to help document the origin and early evolution of so many freshwater fish living today.”
Otophysans are distinctive in the way their first four vertebrae are modified to transmit vibrations to the ear from the swim bladder (a gas-filled internal organ that allows fish to maintain their position in the water without expending significant energy)—basically functioning as a human ear.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
While the discovery of Acronichthys introduces a new species to paleontological records, it also provides critical data to trace the origins of otophysans, as the supergroup is understood to have started as a marine (saltwater) species before transitioning to a freshwater species. The discovery suggests the transition from marine to freshwater species happened at least twice during otophysans’ evolution.
The study estimated a new divergence time for otophysans from marine to freshwater species at around 154 million years ago (the Late Jurassic period) – after Pangea, the supercontinent, began to break apart 200 million years ago.
The researchers are now left trying to understand how the tiny Acronichthys moved from continent to continent if they couldn’t swim across saltwater oceans—because their freshwater ancestors now live on every continent except Antarctica.
“There’s still so much we don’t know, and a fossil site right here in Canada is giving us the key to understanding the origins of groups that now dominate rivers and lakes around the world,” said Don Brinkman, curator emeritus at the Royal Tyrell Museum in a media release.
Earth sciences Professor Lisa Van Loon at Western University, used synchrotron beam-lines to capture a more sophisticated, detailed look of the skeleton, with computed tomography (micro-CT) scans—high-resolution X-ray images that create 3D virtual models of objects while they rotate.
“Many of the fossil specimens collected by the Royal Tyrrell Museum are incredibly fragile, and some are impossible to extract from the rock itself, so micro-CT scans provide not only the best method for acquiring detailed images of what’s inside, they’re also the safest way to avoid destroying the fossil all together,” said Van Loon.
“Dinosaurs are pretty exciting, so a lot of time and effort has been focused on them… but we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding the diversity of prehistoric freshwater fish,” concludes Brinkman.
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Camera trap on the Bronx River reveals first beaver in years- Courtesy RJ Hawkins
Camera trap on the Bronx River reveals first beaver in years- Courtesy RJ Hawkins
Beavers had not been seen in New York City for 200 years, after their coveted fur pelts became valuable and habitat was impacted by human activity.
But, finally, in 2007 one was spotted in the Bronx River. Then, a second beaver arrived—nicknamed Justin Beaver, who joined José, the original—and they lived together for a number of years on the river.
The last anyone saw them was 2018; they are believed to have passed away, leaving a keystone species missing from the ecosystem.
But four months ago, biology student and beaver activist RJ Hawkins was checking camera trap footage and reported new findings:
“Something surprising was spotted in the Bronx River that hasn’t been seen for a very long time: a beaver!”
In June of 2024, two camera traps were placed upstream and two others downstream of the Mitsubishi Walk section of the Bronx Zoo to try to see if any beavers had returned to the river.
While no beavers were spotted during the data collection near the Twin Dams, which continued through October, the data did present insight into how impactful dams can be in urban ecosystems.
Normally, beaver dams increase biodiversity in an ecosystem by creating pond/wetland habitats that weren’t there previously. This creates a diversity of habitat types that provides a space for many animal and plant species to thrive.
During the 2024 monitoring period, many more species of animals were observed upstream of the dam than were observed downstream of the dam. This suggests that although there are many issues with urban dams (such as migratory fish and eel species not being able to travel upstream) they may be able to support biodiversity by creating the pond/wetland ecosystems downstream. (And, in places so heavily urbanized such as New York City this is an important discovery as it shows that these habitats need to be maintained as biodiversity hotspots.)
In April of this year, new camera traps were set up at the same places again in the hopes that any beavers might have found a new home.
“At the end of May, incredibly enough, a beaver was seen on the footage—this time swimming past the camera trap,” RJ wrote for the Bronx River Alliance.
Beaver shown on camera trap in September 2025 in Bronx River -Courtesy RJ Hawkins
“This was such an amazing discovery because not only does it show how much biodiversity this section of the river can support, but it also signals the return of a species that had been absent, suggesting significant ecological recovery in an urban environment.”
RJ hoped the sighting was just the beginning—and it was.
New evidence around the Bronx River this summer revealed activity of beavers taking down trees, with the iconic tooth marks left behind when branches and saplings were carried off.
In September RJ’s camera trap caught more images of eager beavers on the riverbank.
Tree cut by beaver in September -Courtesy RJ Hawkins
In the last half century beaver populations have rebounded significantly across the US, with a decline in the fur trade and conservation efforts—and now they are even returning to our biggest cities.
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Luna-lovers and stargazers will have a feast on the East coast tonight, as the first supermoon in 11 months will occur just before midnight.
A supermoon is a colloquial term for when the Moon reaches perigee, the closest point to Earth during it’s orbital rotation. This makes the Moon noticeably larger, and appears larger still when close to the horizon, which it will be at 11:48 p.m. EDT tonight, (4.48 a.m. BST Oct 7th, for the Brits).
As well as being a supermoon, it will also be classed as a Harvest Moon. This is given to the last full moon before the autumn equinox, the light from which was traditionally used to harvest crops by pre-modern farmers.
They would reap and pick long into the night with the Moon’s bright light helping them see. Alternatively, if the full Moon appears after the autumn equinox, it’s known as the Hunter’s Moon, as that same light would allow hunters to shoot by.
But wait, didn’t the equinox happen already? Yes indeed, however according to various sources, every few years, since the lunar months and solar year don’t correspond perfectly, a Harvest Moon will appear in October, as is the case this year.
In a bit of trivia, this will be the latest in the year that a Harvest Moon has appeared since 1987. In a further piece of trivia, the supermoon appears larger to us close to the horizon than when it’s high in the sky. This is known as the “Moon Illusion”
“Photographs prove that the Moon is the same width near the horizon as when it’s high in the sky, but that’s not what we perceive with our eyes,” NASA noted in a blog post.
“Thus it’s an illusion rooted in the way our brains process visual information. Even though we’ve been observing it for thousands of years, there’s still not a satisfying scientific explanation for exactly why we see it.”
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Quote of the Day: “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.” – Johann von Goethe
Photo by: Tim Mossholder
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